Something of what was in her thoughts she managed to convey to Hallam when they reached the house and entered together, her arm within his. Alone in the drawing-room, when he held her in his embrace and kissed the bright upturned face, she slipped her hands behind his neck and looked back at him with tender loving eyes.
“Paul,” she whispered, “I wish we had a child of our very own—a wee scrap of soft pink flesh, with tiny clinging hands. My dear, my dearest, I do so want a child!”
He gazed down at her, troubled and immeasurably surprised, and gently kissed the tremulous lips. He had never given any thought to the matter until now, when he realised the aching mother-hunger expressed in her desire: she had concealed it so successfully hitherto. He did not himself wish for children; the thought of them even was an embarrassment. With clumsy tenderness he stroked her hair.
“It seems as though it is not to be,” he said. “I didn’t know you cared so much, sweetheart.”
“Don’t you care?” she asked. “I!” He seemed surprised. “I’ve got you,” he said, and drew her close in his embrace.
Book Three—Chapter Twenty Three.
The first real sorrow in Esmé’s life came to her with the realisation of the fact that her influence with her husband no longer sufficed to keep him steady. Gradually, so gradually that she did not suspect it until the thing was plainly manifest, he fell back upon his former habit of intemperance and became once more the drunkard whom she had first met at the Zuurberg, and pitied and despised for the weakness of his character.
Hallam did not give in to his vice without a struggle; but with each lapse his will weakened, till eventually he ceased to fight his enemy, ceased even to consider the pain which he was aware he caused his wife.